An abs training post by Cambridge personal trainer Callie Durbrow
Are You Going About Your Ab Training the Wrong Way?
Hey, I hope you are doing awesome and you are feeling great when it comes to your workouts, nutrition and your daily lifestyle. We’re on day #24 on the Cambridge Personal Trainer 30 Day Fat Loss Challenge.
I got a bunch of questions this past week about ab training. It’s a pretty common thing, everyone wants a tight mid-section and we all want to kick that extra flab around the middle, right?
Okay, so Britney was cool once…
Anyway back to the topic at hand. Training your abs…it’s not about crunches and bicycle crunches and more crunches…This type of consistent flexion (moving forward of your spine) can actually do more harm than good. It can create soreness in your back and neck and create serious muscular imbalances. Plus, crunches are boring as all hell. Can you tell I’m opposed?
Well if you are not doing crunches, then what can you do? In my training groups we focus on a lot of full range movements such as kettle bell sit ups, ball roll outs, ball tucks and planks.
There are countless exercises that you can be doing to improve abdominal strength and also avoid injury. I’m not a huge proponent of “isolation” exercises because in order to get your abs looking really great, you must lose body fat (which happens throughout the whole body without spot reduction) and that is done through big movements that engage a lot of muscle groups and burn a ton of calories thus leading to an increase in your overall metabolic rate.
But, with that said, you need to have a certain amount of core strength and so here’s an awesome little video with a killer core circuit that is guaranteed to get you feeling the burn…
[pro-player width=’530′ height=’253′ type=’video’]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tC8dz3RXXn8[/pro-player]